1863. ] 
NEW PELARGONIUMS. 
25 
NEW PELARGONIUMS. 
WITH AN ILLUSTRATION. 
iP^REAT as liave been the advances made towards perfection in the 
large-flowered section of this extensive and most useful family of 
popular garden flowers, w T e do not yet appear to have reached the 
limit, for finer and still finer varieties are year by year produced. 
Sometimes the advance is in size, sometimes in colour, sometimes 
in the general ensemble of the flower; but scarcely a season passes by 
without leaving us one or more varieties which we can point to as superior 
to those already known; and a glance at the accompanying plate will, we 
think, show that the year 1867 has nobly contributed its quota to the 
general improvement. 
In Emperor (fig. 1), we have what is in our opinion the premier flower 
of the season; for in regard to its size, its symmetry, its colouring, its out¬ 
line, and its centre, it approaches as nearly as it seems possible to attain 
towards perfection, and it appears to have also the constitutional vigour 
■which is necessary to secure the full development of these good qualities. 
The variety must be classed among the salmony-rose sorts—a group which 
contains many other kinds of remarkable beauty. Rob Roy (fig. 2), is 
quite distinct in colour, being one of the purplish-rose group ; it also is a 
flower of first-class properties, not so large as Emperor, but in regard to 
form and colouring equally perfect. Both sorts have gained first-class cer¬ 
tificates at the hands of those lynx-eyed and severe critics—the London 
censors of flowers, which is a sufficient indication of their merit. 
T. M. 
THE LARGE-FLOWERED PELARGONIUM. 
Cjf^OR some time past the floral periodicals have said but little on the 
p subject of this branch of the Pelargonium family, perhaps owing to 
the wide-spread popularity of those adapted for bedding. Never¬ 
theless, I can assure all who love greenhouse flowers that the 
improvement of the former has not stood still, but that at no time 
during the last thirty-five years, for which time I have cultivated this queen 
of the greenhouse, has the improvement been more marked and rapid. I well 
remember the first example of the “clear white eye,” and the pleasure 
with wdiich the advance was received ; but it is only recently that this now 
indispensable point has been obtained, in some of the most important strains 
of colour—for instance, in the purple, as represented by Diadem, and 
in the scarlet or orange as represented by that very fine flower named 
Charles Turner. The size is another point in which great progress has 
3rd Ser.— i. c 
